Automation

Two weeks ago, OpenAI introduced Codex Automations. The idea: define a trigger (a cron job, a push, a new issue), write instructions in natural language, and an agent runs it solo in an isolated worktree. No human intervention. While you sleep, the agent triages issues, summarizes CI failures, generates release briefs, and even improves its own instructions. Sounds like magic, right? And it is, a little. But there’s one catch they didn’t emphasize too much in the keynote: you need the Codex App running on your desktop. macOS or Windows only. No headless servers. No running it on a mini PC and forgetting about it. ...

For months, I’ve been running Claude Code tasks using a homemade cron. A Bash script that starts a headless session, feeds it a prompt, waits for it to finish, and then closes. It works. Barely, but it works. I’ve got it up on GitHub if anyone’s interested. Then on Friday, with version 2.1.71, Anthropic introduced /loop. A native scheduler. Built directly into Claude Code sessions. My first reaction was: “They killed my project.” ...